How to exchange data between Activities in Android – Intent putExtra method

Today’s post is on how to exchange data between activities using Android Intent putExtra and getExtras methods called in an activity code. We are going to show you how to send objects of your own type and read them in an activity. Our example is based on the Android read SMS tutorial. We have modified this application to show SMS contents in a new view. This is the result.

MainActivity.java

This code displays the contents of SMS Inbox in a form of the list using ListView. This code is explained in details in our previous tutorial – Android read SMS. Our modification for this tutorial was made in the onListItemClick method.

Hi, I’m totally new at this. I would like some help on understanding the ‘extras’ idea. Is it like passing variable data between two views?
I come from the wonderful land of PHP, where, if you’re familiar with Laravel, or CodeIgniter and such, you can pass data from one view to another.
Is it similar? If so, why is it “Extra” ? Does this bare different significance?
I am grateful to any help.